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From Indian to French to English Š Some Wisconsin Placeâœnames Names, Vol. 33, Nos. 1-2 (1985) From Indian to French to English - Some Wisconsin Place-Names FREDERIC G. CASSIDY Explorers of new territories, first-comers, men of action, cannot be expected to report accurately items from the new languages they meet. They record approximations as best they can - unfamiliar sounds heard by untrained listeners who cannot refer to the rules of a language they do not know for guidance in recording what they think they have heard. Later, when literate and trained observers come upon the scene, they may be able to correct these approximations. But in the meantime changes of various kinds may have taken place: a lingua franca may have developed, the local inhabitants may have moved or been displaced by other-lan- guage speakers, names may have been changed or translated. It is just such a series of happenings which have made it impossible, up to now, to explain with certainty the name Wisconsin. This is not the place to go into the complexities of that particular name, but since the present area of this state was the first part of the Lake Superior region to be explored by the white man, a brief study of Wisconsin place names will at least illustrate the problem: how some names were accepted in more or less their Indian forms, how others were translated into French or later into English, how still others were newly named in either French or English, and what happened to them along the way. It was the extension of the Canadian fur trade into the Upper Great Lakes region, as well as the hope of finding a Northwest Passage to the Pacific that led the French into this territory. From their very important central post at Michillimackinac (now Mackinac Island) they explored lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior, establishing regular routes, camps, depots. One of the most important of these was present Green Bay, Wisconsin, at the head of the large northern branch of Lake Michigan where the Fox River enters it. Around this bay and river mouth were settlements of Algonkian-speaking Indians - Menomini, Ojibwa (Chippe- wa), Ozaukee (Sauk), Outagami (Fox), Potawatomi, Shawano, and oth- ers - as well as the Sioux-speaking Winnebago - when Jean Nicolet came there in 1634, the first white man to do so. Nicolet had been specially 51 52 Cassidy trained for this exploration by order of Samuel de Champlain, who hoped to find a northwest passage to the Pacific - a hope which entered into the place-naming of the region. What seemed to feed this hope was the presence of Winnebago Indians, since their name (actually Algonkian, for they called themselves Hochungara) meant' 'strong-smelling-water peo- pie." The meaning of winne-, the common word for water, was perfectly clear; not clear was the sense of the second element, which was surmised to refer to the place of origin of the Winnebago, somewhere to the west, where there were strong-smelling sulphur springs or the like. Since the "strong-smelling" could also mean "salt," it encouraged the hope of a salt-water passage, for the huge extent of the continent between the Great Lakes and the Pacific was not realized at the time. So the Winnebago were thought of as the "salt-water people," which accounts for most of the early recorded French names for the Bay: Le Lac des Gens de Mer, which appears on a map of 1640; Le Lac des Ouinipiguek, 1659; Le Lac de la Nation Maritime and Le Lac des Peuples Maritimes, both 1659-60; and the erroneous La Baie Salee - for the lake was not salt. 1 Meantime, a less complimentary translation of Winnebago had also been made: l' eau puante, stinking water. This was soon abbreviated and transferred to the Indians themselves, so that they became generally known as les Puants, the stinkers, or stinkards. Some protests against this insulting error were made by the missionary fathers,2 but it was too firmly established to be changed. This nickname for the Winnebago Indians, already present by 1634, appeared in La Baie des Puants, which became the common name and continued so until the late eighteenth century, or throughout the French regime and even after the Winnebago had left the mouth of the Fox River and had moved to present Lake Winnebago. So we see a development from Algonkian (probably Ojibwa) to French, with a twist of the mean- ing, to the early English names partly or wholly translated: Puans Bay and Stinking Bay (both 1766). The name Green Bay (1766) appears to have been a new baptism when the English took the area over. 3 Once intro- duced, it rapidly replaced the French names. Even the French-speaking community which remained in the city of Green Bay accepted it and occasionally translated it as La Baie Verte, 4 completing the exchange. Other early names from the French period relating to the Indians are the tribal ones: Otchipwe is Bishop Baraga's spelling of Ojibwa, aphetized and Englished as Chippeway, now commonly Chippewa, used for a river, falls, lake, county, and several minor features. 5 But Ojibwa is not forgot- ten, or has made a comeback, for a township and park in Sawyer county. Ozaukee was similarly beheaded and reduced, by the French to Sac, Wisconsin Place-Names 53 and by the English to Sauk. They come into contrast in the side-by-side cities of Prairie du Sac and Sauk City in Sauk County. The full and reduced forms are found together in the township and village of Saukville in Ozaukee county. Outagamie meant fox and the Indians' name was at once translated as les Renards by the French and later Fox by the English. Renard did not survive in a Wisconsin place-name, but Outagamie has done so in the present county, and Fox, first given to the river flowing into the head of the Green Bay, and forming part of the waterway almost connecting the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence system to the Wisconsin-Mississippi sys- tem, has spread. Only initially did it have reference to the Indians; it was the river that took it inland along its course. Several other local Fox names are directly connected with the animal, not with the Indians or the river. The Menomini Indians are remembered in Wisconsin with three dis- tinct spellings: Menominee for a river, county, township, creek and park; Menomonee for a different river, falls, and city; and Menomonie for a township, city and nearby features. In this case, the accidents of spelling by local people have become established by usage, and since they sound the same and are orthographically about equal, no official attempt has been made to raise one above the others. A similar establishment by usage is seen in Winnebago and Canadian Winnipeg. The latter would seem to preserve the old French form noted earlier: Ouinipiguek. The former appears on the inland Lake Winnebago, Winnebago county, and several features in three other counties associated with the lake. The Winnebago Indians, transported west, would not stay there but drifted back to Wisconsin and live on marginal lands in the Black River Falls and other areas. The Potawatomi are remembered only in Potawatomi Indian Reservation and Potawatomi State Park, the name surviving in an English form. The French had called them Poutaoutamik. The voyageurs reduced this, in their daily usage, to a descriptive nick- name, les Poux - which means lice, but which the Indians would not take as referring to them. The Courtes-Oreilles Indians, or short-ears, a sub-group of the Ottawa so named from their practice of cutting off the rims of their ears, 6 have left no name of their own behind, the French having given them this descrip- tive name. Thanks to inadequate knowledge of French by almost every- body concerned, along with the understandable tendency to "rationalize" spellings to suit English orthography and pronunciation, this name has furnished special problems. In full French form, the lake should be le lac des Courtes Oreilles, but to English speakers the plural -s on both adjec- tive and noun seem superfluous. Consequently court has prevailed in Lac 54 Cassidy Court Oreilles (Atlas of Wisconsin, 1974). The Wisconsin Geographic Names Council, in 1973, had decided to keep partial French spelling in Lac Courte Oreilles (Decisions on Names, 1979 edition), but later re- turned to Court (Decisions, 1981 ed.).7 Meantime, both pronunciation and spelling became entirely English and phonetic in Couderay, Sawyer County, for a township, village, and river, while the final step has been taken in Barron county with Coudray Lake, which even changes Lake to come after, in English fashion, whereas Lac comes before. This final step in anglicization has not been taken in the names of the Great Lakes, which retain the original French word order, Lac Superieur becoming Lake Superior, and the others keeping the French sequence similarly. Since the French explored Wisconsin for a century before the English challenge developed, it is no surprise to find geographical terms, especial- ly waterway terms, surviving in many Wisconsin place-names. At the northwest, in Lake Superior, are Chequamegon Bay and Chequamegon Point, in which the Ch- spelling won out over the later Sh- of English- speakers (Kelton, Warren, Schoolcraft, and others). This, even so, is a simplified form, since it was Chagaouamigong in the Jesuit Relations. 8 Baraga recorded the Ojibwa word as Shagawamikang, meaning "where there is a long shallow place in the lake where the waves break. "9 One of the most ancient Ojibwa villages was on the Point and peninsula; there also the Jesuit mission of La Pointe du St.
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